Can't Swipe Up or Down on Apple Watch

Question

Can't Swipe Up or Down on Apple Watch

From time to time I can't swipe up or down to reveal the Notifications or the Control Center on my Series 5 Apple Watch. My wife doesn't seem to have the same issue on her Series 6 but I see where other users have reported having the problem on 6 so don't think issue is related to hardware but more likely watchOS.

While the workaround is to restart the watch, the frequency of it becoming unresponsive to these swipe gestures, I'm currently having to restart over two days when the problem happens. No, I haven't wiped the watch completely clean and started over again, can't say I've ever had an issue resolved with that step but looking to see if others have this, other workarounds and will look to report this as a bug that hopefully can be addressed in an update to WatchOS.

Apple Watch Sport

Posted on Sep 23, 2021 7:17 PM

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Answer 1

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commanderclif_me Author

Level 1

66 points

Sep 24, 2021 8:16 AM in response to javaliga

Thanks for the reply but as I stated in my original post, Restarting the watch is the current workaround but it requires frequency and annoying that when you go to swipe, you want it to do that function then and not have to wait for restart every time.

Secondly, aware of unpairing and resetting but avoiding that step for now as I stated in OP.

No screen protector but don't see or have had any indication that debris was a cause since a restart fixes the issue. Sure I've had where wet fingers or wet watch may not respond to touches and cleaning or drying allows the functionality to work correctly but that is not the case here in my situation or in others who have this happen intermittently and with frequency.

One thing I read was toggling off and back on the haptic setting on the watch seems to fix the issue without a restart so I'll be testing that the next time it quits working properly.

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Answer 2

javaliga

Level 10

119,539 points

Sep 23, 2021 8:05 PM in response to commanderclif_me

The first (and simplest) thing to try if something isn’t working right is to restart your Apple Watch and its paired iPhone. If necessary (device not responding), try a forced restart. Both methods can be found here:

How to restart your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Restart your iPhone - Apple Support

If that doesn't help, the next steps would be to unpair and pair your watch again and restore from the backup just created. This should result in no loss of data. It deletes all temp and corrupted files and re-indexes the file system.

Unpair and erase your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Set up your Apple Watch - Apple Support

BTW - I assume you have also tried cleaning the watch and removed the screen protector (if any).

How to clean your Apple Watch - Apple Support

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Can't Swipe Up or Down on Apple Watch

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